Why Cross-Team Alignment Can Make-or-Break Customer Experiences

Is your team sabotaging your customer experience without even knowing it?

Customer experience can “make or break a brand,” as Angel Singh, VP of Customer Experience at Petco, explained on The Frictionless Experience.

Angel, who has also worked with top-tier brands like Home Depot, Sephora, and Albertsons, emphasized that cross-team alignment isn't just corporate jargon. It’s essential for delivering a consistent and seamless journey that keeps customers engaged and satisfied.

When internal teams—such as marketing, product, and operations—aren’t aligned, it creates a fractured experience for the customer. Angel discussed on The Frictionless Experience how her cross-functional role at Petco allows her to collaborate across departments to keep the focus on the customer.

By aligning all teams around a shared mission—serving the customer—companies can foster a seamless experience. This is why cross-team alignment is more than a trend; it’s an essential ingredient for any organization that strives to create memorable and frictionless customer journeys.

Breaking Down Internal Friction 

Internal friction is often a greater obstacle to customer satisfaction than external competition. Company structures, Angel explained, can inhibit teamwork and disrupt the customer journey.

She said:

“You’ll have a Chief Digital Officer, a CMO, a CTO, CFO...and all of those chiefs have their siloed teams underneath them."

In this setup, each team operates according to its goals, often without regard for the overarching customer experience.

This division may yield impressive departmental results, but it often leads to a disjointed experience for the customer. Reflecting on the impact of internal silos, Angel shared:

“If you’ve ever sat in executive meetings, they are full of KPIs...but somehow we’re down in revenue."  The disconnect lies in each team’s pursuit of its own objectives without an integrated approach that considers the customer journey in full. In this setup, a company may hit internal benchmarks, but those metrics fail to translate into meaningful customer experiences.

Organizations that can break down these internal barriers gain a real competitive edge. By prioritizing collaboration over departmental isolation, companies can create smoother, more cohesive customer experiences that foster loyalty and drive growth.

How Traditional Organizational Structures Lose Sight of the Customer

Many traditional organizational structures lose sight of the customer because they emphasize fragmented responsibilities over holistic customer journeys. According to Angel, this setup results in teams seeing “slices” of the customer experience, with different departments owning separate portions of the journey.

This tunnel vision, she explained, leads teams to “build experiences, [or] buy products” based on assumptions about customer preferences rather than a complete understanding of the customer.

As companies grow, the challenge of maintaining a unified approach to CX only intensifies.

For example, large organizations often become hyper-focused on small sections of the customer journey. She explained:

“The product owner will own a piece of the checkout...the banner here...the homepage, [or] this subsection of the website...they don’t see the whole experience anymore.".

When teams only see a piece of the customer’s journey, the big-picture view of what customers actually experience can be lost.

Traditional structures are designed to enhance efficiency within specific departments, but they can work against the customer when they prevent teams from collaborating effectively. When marketing, product, and customer support lack a unified view of the customer, they create unintentional friction points in the journey, leading to dissatisfaction.

For companies that want to put customers first, restructuring to foster a comprehensive view of the journey is crucial.

Cross-Team Collaboration: The Biggest Roadblock in CX

Cross-functional collaboration is often the biggest roadblock for organizations trying to improve customer experience (CX).

Angel noted:

The absence of unified goals can hinder collaboration between teams, resulting in disjointed experiences. For instance, if marketing, product, and customer support don’t share customer insights, they can’t deliver a cohesive experience across all touchpoints.

Customers may encounter inconsistencies, such as receiving personalized offers from marketing that aren’t acknowledged by customer support when they reach out. Such gaps create frustration, making customers feel like they’re interacting with multiple disconnected entities rather than a single, cohesive brand.

Organizations need more than advanced technologies and well-designed strategies to succeed in CX; they need teams that work together with the customer as their North Star.

Without strong cross-functional collaboration, even the most well-thought-out CX strategies can falter.

Small But Impactful Changes to Break Down Silos

To address the challenge of cross-functional misalignment, Angel emphasized the importance of starting with leadership. Leaders should work together to set common, customer-centric goals for their teams.

She recommended aligning all departments around “three or four business KPIs and customer KPIs” that all teams can work toward. This focus ensures that each department considers the customer journey as a whole rather than just its own isolated goals.

Integrating customer data across teams is another small yet impactful change.

When customer insights are shared across departments, it enables marketing, product, and customer support teams to create a cohesive experience. In Angel’s experience, one of the most effective steps is having all teams “march toward” these central KPIs instead of focusing solely on individual OKRs.

When customer experience becomes everyone’s responsibility, departments are more motivated to collaborate, and the customer benefits from a more seamless journey.

By setting shared goals, aligning around customer-centric metrics, and fostering open communication between teams, organizations can make meaningful strides toward breaking down silos and delivering exceptional CX.

Empowering Teams with Customer-Centric Objectives

Angel explained that companies with strong customer-centric metrics can empower teams to focus on shared objectives. Reflecting on her experience at Sephora and Home Depot, she shared that these companies cultivated a “customer-first mindset,” which helped unify cross-functional teams.

“If a customer had an issue, I would have to fix whatever the customer said."

When teams know their work impacts real customers, they are more likely to feel responsible for ensuring customer satisfaction, regardless of their specific role.

Cross-functional metrics that prioritize the customer journey help teams understand that they are accountable to both their internal colleagues and the customer. Angel highlighted that, instead of having isolated KPIs, companies should focus on metrics like customer retention, satisfaction, and NPS (net promoter score).

These types of goals cut across departments and ensure that every team sees the customer journey as an interconnected experience.

Closing the Gap Between the Promise and the Delivery

Many organizations promise a seamless experience, but internal disconnects prevent them from delivering on that promise. The solution isn’t necessarily more technology but rather better alignment across teams. While “technology is important,” Angel explained, it cannot fully address customer needs if teams aren’t aligned.

For example, marketing may push out personalized campaigns, but if customer support lacks access to the same insights, they can’t provide a consistent experience.

Rather than focusing solely on departmental achievements, Angel stressed the importance of asking, “How can we work together to deliver a seamless experience?”

Why Cross-Team Alignment is Essential for the Future of CX

The conversation with Angel Singh is a powerful reminder that cross-functional alignment is more than a trend. It’s essential for delivering a memorable and cohesive customer experience.

Organizations that prioritize customer-centric metrics and shared goals across departments gain a competitive edge by keeping customers satisfied and engaged.

By breaking down silos, empowering teams with shared objectives, and focusing on customer-centric metrics, brands can transform cross-team alignment into a powerful enabler of CX excellence. As Angel stated:

Organizations need to break down silos and put the customer at the center of everything. Only then can they deliver seamless, personalized, and frictionless experiences that leave a lasting impression. In short, here's how:

1. Establish Shared Customer-Centric KPIs Across All Teams

One of the most effective ways to unite departments is to set common, customer-focused goals rather than letting each team work toward its own isolated metrics. Companies could focus on “three or four business KPIs and customer KPIs” that everyone can work toward. When every department is aligned on what success looks like from the customer’s perspective, it encourages a unified effort rather than competition for individual metrics.

2. Create Cross-Functional Teams for Projects That Impact the Customer Journey

Cross-functional teams, where members from marketing, product, technology, and customer support work together, can break down silos and create solutions that consider the entire customer journey. Cross-functional teams allow for comprehensive insights and collaboration across the entire customer experience rather than fragmented, department-specific goals.

3. Foster Regular Interdepartmental Communication and Collaboration

Frequent communication between teams is essential for a unified approach. Angel noted that one of the main obstacles in delivering seamless customer experiences is “organizational politics,” which can prevent even the best strategies from being implemented smoothly. Regular, structured communication helps departments stay aligned, share insights, and prevent miscommunication.

4. Align Technology and Data to Support a Unified Customer View.

One of the biggest challenges in creating a seamless customer experience is integrating customer data across all departments. Angel explained, “We don’t have the data...it’s siloed”, which makes it difficult for teams to understand the full customer journey. Integrated technology platforms and shared data help every team access a single, accurate view of the customer, ensuring that the entire organization is working from the same playbook.

5. Establish Feedback Loops for Continuous Improvement

A feedback loop keeps the organization aligned and ensures that each team contributes to an evolving customer journey. Angel recalled the impact of hearing a 75-year-old customer’s frustration about a missed groceries delivery order during COVID. Going without groceries while she waited on the front porch, not knowing the status of her order because an email was never sent that it was delayed.

Creating structured feedback loops helps companies stay connected to real customer needs and take action quickly. Angel explained:"That's the fundamental thing that companies forget. There are people on the other side."